Sunday, 30 November 2014

Latin Fusion? Afrocuban Library Music?
Psychedelic Jazz? Afro Latin Vintage
Orchestra's fourth LP, 'Pulsion', is all that
and more. The album is a dense, at times
claustrophobic, trip. In fact if we're
bandying semi-official genres around,
how about Murky Exotica? Highly recommended.

Friday, 28 November 2014

Journey with me, back to 1984. At the time I
was a branch manager in a small chain
of independent record shops - a happy time,
if you exclude the owner of the business from
the picture. He was highly skilled at making
my life, and that of every other manager in
the chain, a misery. But let's not dwell on
the negative. Towards the end of 1984 the
staff in our store each compiled our own
personal top 20 singles and LP's of the year
and I recently unearthed the original
handwritten copy of my selections, thirty
years on.

Taking a look through my singles list,
I was initially surprised to see three reggae
tunes included, as I'm sometimes quick to dismiss any reggae made after 1980. An erroneous generalisation on my part. Aswad's last great moment,
'Chasin For the Breeze', Patrick Andy's
melancholic 'Regular Heartbreaker' and
Michael Palmer's wicked 'Lick Shot', still sound great to these ears.

Elsewhere, two singles apiece from The Smiths,
REM and Bruce Springsteen made it into my top
20. The first Smiths LP and 'Reckoning' were
massively important records for me, but, in
retrospect, 1984 was a funny old year for
this long-term Springsteen fan. A brace of unforgettable live shows rubbed shoulders with a
very commercial album that I find difficult
to listen to now. 'Dancing in the Dark'
certainly wouldn't be at No.1 if I made the list
today.

Clay Allison was the name on the sticker of
an American import EP I bought in 1984,
though by that time the band had re-christened themselves as Opal. The line-up
featured Kendra Smith from The Dream
Syndicate and former Rain Parade guitarist
David Roback. Smith was replaced by Hope
Sandoval in 1987 and the duo later found
success as Mazzy Star.

The debut Jesus &
Mary Chain single was an extraordinary thing
to play in the shop, in amongst the endless
Nik Kershaw, Sade and Miami Sound Machine
tosh. I wasn't destined to become a long time
fan of the band, but 'Upside Down' remains a
quite magnificent racket. Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'Two Tribes' is
that rarest of beasts, a massive, virtually
omnipresent, hit single that I never got
tired of hearing. At the other end of the
popularity spectrum was Float Up CP, a band
who emerged from the ashes of Rip Rig +
Panic, issued one fine album to a largely
indifferent public, before disintegrating.
Four years later, lead singer Neneh Cherry
would release 'Buffalo Stance' and have her
own massive hit single.

Glancing down the remainder of my favourite singles of 1984, I'm pleased to note that there are no absolute stinkers, no major regrets about what I included (though what I omitted is another matter - no 'C.R.E.E.P.' for example. What was I thinking?). Next time, I'll take a look at my top 20 LPs from 1984. Anyone care to guess what might have made the list?

Tuesday, 25 November 2014

I stumbled upon Nick Drake's music in 1980,
during my early days of working behind the
counter of a record shop, via the 'Fruit
Tree' box set. At the time I knew next to
nothing about him or his music, but can
remember being quite shaken by the cold
bleakness of 'Black Eyed Dog', one of four
hitherto unreleased songs in that original
set.

Nick's short life ended 40 years ago today.
It's remarkable to think that he'd only be 66
if he was still with us. This is my favourite
Nick Drake song, originally released as part
of the re-issued 'Fruit Tree' set in 1986.

Monday, 24 November 2014

87 years ago, my Aunt was born in a rented
Edwardian terraced house on this street in
the East End of London. She has vivid
memories of hiding in the cupboard under the stairs with
her Mother, as the bombs of The Blitz rained
down just a couple of miles away and she also
recalls the euphoric street parties thrown at the conclusion of the War. When she married at the
start of the 1950s, she and her husband moved
upstairs, while her Mother lived on the
ground floor. My Aunt and Uncle started their
own family in the house. They all shared an
outside toilet and had no bathroom.

In the late 1950s much of the
area was condemned and the terraces were
slated for demolition. The rental
tenants were given the option to either take
a flat on the new estate that would rise from
the rubble, or move out of the area
altogether. My Aunt and Uncle secured a sixth floor flat and my Aunt's Mother took a small ground floor apartment in the new development.
For the first time in their lives, they were
each able to enjoy their own indoor private
facilities and wash in something more than
the kitchen sink or a tin bath on the living
room floor. My Aunt still lives in the tower
block overlooking the spot where her house
once stood and appreciates these luxuries to
this day.

In the early 1960s, halfway through the redevelopment and after a local government
rethink, demolition was halted and tenants of
the surviving terraced housing were offered
the chance to inexpensively buy their own
properties and receive substantial financial
aid to improve them. Those that weren't
purchased by the sitting tenants were snapped
up by property developers. In recent years,
much of the area has gone through a period of
gentrification. One of those small terraced
houses in the photo, considered unfit for
human habitation 60 years ago and only saved
from the bulldozer by a hair's breath,
recently went on the market for in excess of
£1,000,000. Meanwhile, my Aunt's tower block
and the estate within which it sits, are
scheduled for demolition within the next
couple of years, to be replaced by another,
newer, version.

Sunday, 16 November 2014

There are many good things about the easy access to music that we enjoy today. I want it. I got it. Quick as that. I can order a physical album without leaving my keypad, I can stream entire catalogues in any number of ways, or I can purchase and download individual tunes or complete recorded works in seconds. The problem with the latter comes when a stray tune hits the hard drive, is played and enjoyed for a while, before being lost in an anonymous folder on my computer. Which happens a lot.
In this occasional series I'll be scouring my D and G drives, unearthing half-forgotten gems along the way.

The fashions, the curtains, the carpet, the
radiogram, the goldfish tank - the castanets!
Could this anonymous photo possibly be any
more 1965? How I'd like to rifle through that
little rack of 45s on the floor. What do we
think the Decca single is at the front? I
really hope it's not something by The
Bachelors or Kenneth McKellar. It may be a
long shot, but I'm putting half a crown on it
being this.

(I'm heading out of town for a few days.
Should be back in action on Wednesday.)

Thursday, 13 November 2014

Off the top of my head, I can only remember
ever meeting a mere handful of my youthful
prog-rock heroes in the flesh, usually while
bagging post-gig autographs in the 1970s.
One, who shall remain nameless, was,
disappointingly, an utter arse, the combined
membership of Van Der Graaf Generator were
very amiable and Rick Wakeman, who was
friendly and extremely funny.

A couple of evenings ago, round at our local
petrol station, I was surprised to see Rick
Wakeman walk across the forecourt in front
of me, from the shop back to his car. I've
no idea what might have brought him out to
my neck of the woods, but was suddenly taken
with the urge to go over and renew our brief
acquaintance of nearly 40 years earlier.
Halfway out of the car, though, I changed my
mind. What could I possibly say to him that
would justify invading his privacy?

In retrospect, perhaps I could've quizzed
him about his involvement in a short-lived
group, Dib Cochran & the Earwigs, which also
featured Tony Visconti on bass and vocals,
drummer John Cambridge (from the band
Juniors Eyes) and a certain Marc Bolan on
guitar. Dib Cochran & the Earwigs issued one
single, 'Oh Baby', in September 1970, a
month before T.Rex released 'Ride a White
Swan'. What if 'Ride a White Swan had
bombed? What if 'Oh Baby' had been the hit?
The 1970s might have been a very different
place.

The b-side of 'Oh Baby', a short
instrumental sketch entitled 'Universal
Love', features Rick to the fore.

Monday, 10 November 2014

One day, six or seven years ago, when I was working for a well known high street
coffee chain, I was on the till as the
lunchtime queue stretched up the shop and
out of the door. I took a lady's order and
was about to move on to the next customer,
when she said, 'Why do you put up with this
all day? I wouldn't put up with it'. She
wasn't complaining about the queue, she was
pointing at a speaker in the ceiling.
With a laugh, I apologised for the quality
of the (admittedly crushingly dull) instore
music, but she was deadly serious. 'It's not
THIS music it's ANY music. Why is there
music everywhere nowadays? I can't stand
music. I don't see the point of it. Why
can't we just live in silence?'

Over the years, in my capacity as a store
manager, I had to deal with all manner of
customer complaints and comments, but that
one had me stumped and has stuck with me.
Had I been on my toes, I could've responded by quoting Nietzsche, 'Without music, life would be a
mistake'. Or maybe Robert Fripp, 'Music
is the wine that fills the cup of silence'. Perhaps even, bizarrely, former LibDem head
honcho Charles Kennedy, 'I couldn't imagine
a day without music. It relaxes and
stimulates me in equal measure. And I hate
the sound of silence. The concept, I mean.
Not the track by Simon and Garfunkel.'

Saturday, 8 November 2014

Did someone put together a compilation of
tunes from the Amalgamated label for Mark E
Smith in the early 1990s? If so it would
help to explain The Fall's brief foray into
the fine art of the reggae cover version.
Best known is 'Why Are People Grudgeful'
issued as a single in 1993 and based on a
fantastic 1968 Joe Gibbs 7", released on
Amalgamated, which was itself a reply in
song to Lee Perry's scathing, 'People Funny
Boy'.

Less familiar is 'Kimble', originally issued
on Amalgamated by Perry (under the
pseudonym, The Creators) as the b-side to
Stranger Cole & Gladdy's, 'Seeing is
Knowing', also in 1968. The Fall recorded
their version of this obscurity in 1992 for
a John Peel session - and it's a corker.

Monday, 3 November 2014

We watch an infinitesimally small amount of telly in this house, mainly because we don't have a telly, but one show we've been hooked on, since we bumped into the pilot on Channel 4's catch-up service in 2012, is 'Toast of London', which returns for a second series this evening. Written by Matt Berry and Arthur Mathews, it stars Berry himself as Steven Toast - actor, voice-over artist and pompous windbag. It's a hoot. Don't miss it.

Sunday, 2 November 2014

A year to the day after Lou
Reed's death, John Cale issued a re-recorded
version of 'If You Were Still Around', a song
originally released on the 1982 LP 'Music For
A New Society'. The accompanying video is a
moving salute to Reed and other fallen
comrades from the Velvet Underground era,
including Andy Warhol, Sterling Morrison and Nico, and finds Cale himself literally raging
against the dying of the light. Stay tuned until the
very end of the clip and watch as he staggers out of shot,
emotionally spent.